Jenna Dalfino (she/her)

Fear, grief, & pain can teach us to move out of our bodies & into our heads -cramped, with a constant stream of racing thoughts you need to escape. Somatic work isn't about bypassing talk, it's about noticing what's happening underneath it: the clenched jaw, the flinch before you've consciously registered threat. I work by helping your nervous system learn that safety is possible again, in your actual body, not just your head. This isn't about achieving calm. It's expanding your capacity to feel

It's not all in your head. The loneliness of invisible illness is brutal, almost impossible to describe to someone who hasn't lived it. Dismissed by doctors, disbelieved by loved ones, forced to become your own expert. I was diagnosed w/Ehlers Danlos (hEDS)/POTS/MCAS, after a Cerebral Spinal Fluid Leak was dismissed as anxiety. I won't ask you to justify your pain or prove you're sick enough. You can skip that part. There's real work to support flares, including grief for the body you deserved.

What you're carrying probably isn't single-incident PTSD; it's CPTSD, the slow accumulation of not being safe, not being seen, not trusting the people who were supposed to protect you. Attachment wounds don't always look like obvious trauma. Sometimes they look like chronic self-doubt, hypervigilance in relationships, or never quite trusting good things will stay. I work relationally; the relationship itself becomes part of the healing, a place to practice safety you didn't get growing up.

You know the movie Inside Out? IFS, or parts work, is kind of like that: different parts of you can be present at once, often in conflict. Parts work helps you identify who wants what, who is protecting, & which one is exhausted. Parts color your internal world with nuance, & are paths toward deep connection. The goal is integration: the people-pleaser, the dissociator, & the part that's still 7 & scared, working as a team. You'll probably hear me say 'parts' ad nauseam-I'll try to change it up.

Existential therapy asks the big, sometimes uncomfortable questions. You're gonna hear me ask, 'What does that mean to you?' We often dance around themes of freedom, responsibility, meaning-making, and uncertainty; concepts that don't have clean answers. What I offer, though, is the willingness to walk in uncertainty with you, to ask the questions other people avoid, and to trust that you're capable of building a life that feels like yours, even when there's so much unknown to being human.

Existential therapy asks the big, sometimes uncomfortable questions. You're gonna hear me ask, 'What does that mean to you?' We often dance around themes of freedom, responsibility, meaning-making, and uncertainty; concepts that don't have clean answers. What I offer, though, is the willingness to walk into uncertainty with you, to ask the questions other people avoid, and to trust that you're capable of building a life that feels like yours, even when there's so much unknown to being human.

As an adoptee, I've known grief from my first breath. I can feel the weight of it clenching in my chest as I type. How do you learn to carry such enormous love when you've lost the most tangible path to connection? Grief work includes, well, grieving: often hushed & hidden. When you lose someone, you don't just grieve their death — you lose parts of yourself & have to find who you are again. I know sudden grief, anticipated grief, & ambiguous loss; they all deserve time & attention.

As an adoptee, I've known grief from my first breath. I can feel the weight of it clenching in my chest as I type. How do you learn to carry such enormous love when you've lost the most tangible path to connection? Grief work includes, well, grieving: often hushed & hidden. When you lose someone, you don't just grieve their death — you lose parts of yourself & have to find who you are again. I know sudden grief, anticipated grief, & ambiguous loss; they all deserve time & attention.

As an adoptee, I've known grief from my first breath. I can feel the weight of it clenching in my chest as I type. How do you learn to carry such enormous love when you've lost the most tangible path to connection? Grief work includes, well, grieving: often hushed & hidden. When you lose someone, you don't just grieve their death — you lose parts of yourself & have to find who you are again. I know sudden grief, anticipated grief, & ambiguous loss; they all deserve time & attention.